


Of course, she wakes the dragon.

by tenderjock



Series: Dear Forgiveness (i saved a plate for you) [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - booker gets off with that apology, Gen, Nile Freeman Needs a Hug, teddy bears are out stun batons are the new comfort objects, tw for very unwell person in a hospital scene and also canon-typical alcohol and drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:20:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28116048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenderjock/pseuds/tenderjock
Summary: In which Booker gets off with that apology, but things still really aren't - better.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nile Freeman, Old Guard - team
Series: Dear Forgiveness (i saved a plate for you) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2110149
Comments: 19
Kudos: 119





	Of course, she wakes the dragon.

**Author's Note:**

> shout out once again to [drumroll] @hauntedjaeger (saellys) / @hauntedfalcon on tumblr for her ability to withstand my horrific abuse of verb tenses and my half-baked ideas. title is from (obvs) siken's litany in which certain things are crossed out. enjoy!!

Of course, she wakes the dragon.

Love always wakes the dragon and suddenly

flames everywhere.

I can tell already you think I’m the dragon,

that would be so like me, but I’m not. I’m not the dragon.

I’m not the princess either.

Who am I? I’m just a writer. I write things down.

from _Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out_ , by Richard Siken

: : 

Booker was standing on the bank of the Thames, fiddling with a rock for something to do with his hands. He heard Andy approach, feet displacing stones, but didn’t bother to turn. He didn’t know how he knew it’s Andy, and not one of the others, only that after centuries by their sides, he would recognize each of their footsteps anywhere.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Andy sighed. “You’re getting off easy,” she said. “I hope you’ll thank Nile for that.”

“Nile?” Booker asked. He turned the yellowish rock over and over in his hands. He didn’t want to look at Andy, afraid somehow that everything will fall apart if he does. Fall apart worse than it already had. Christ, but he’d fucked this up.

“Nile was the deciding factor,” Andy said. “She wants to let you off with an apology, so.” She shrugged.

Booker looked up, but Andy had turned away, casting a long look down the river. “An apology?” Booker repeated, numb. “That’s it?”

Andy chuckled, just a bit, dry as the Sahara. And Booker’s been to the Sahara. “Joe and Nicky won’t let you off that easy,” she said. “They won’t trust you for a while – decades, centuries maybe. But Nile, well. She’s fine with an apology, and a promise.”

“A promise?” Booker asked. He felt odd, as though he were outside his body, looking in.

Andy looked him in the eye, brought her hand up to his chin – to hold him level, or to hold herself together, he wasn’t sure. “That you’re never going to betray us again.”

“Of course,” he said, swallowing against the sudden dryness of his mouth. “Never, no. Never.”

“Alright, then,” Andy said, turning back to the river. “That’s all it takes.”

“Really?” Booker asked, again. “That’s it?” Andy sighed, stretching her arms above her head, then stopping when her stitches pulled.

“Honestly, Book,” she said. “I’ve done worse. Much, much worse. So, yeah. That’s it.”

He apologized to the team, fumbling both under the weight of the words, the heft of them, the intensity of his emotions that he cannot convey, and also under the hard glare in Joe’s eyes and the carefully blank look on Nicky’s face. He didn’t blame Joe, or Nicky. Booker hated himself, too. He didn’t begrudge Joe, or Nicky, or even Nile and Andy that, the dull roar of their betrayal.

He apologized, and he might have cried a bit but that’s okay because Nicky cried a bit, too. Andy didn’t look him in the eyes, and something in her face reminded him of the growl in her voice when she said, _coward_.

Nile, on the other hand, smiled at him, bright and cheery, despite everything. Booker didn’t understand it. The others – they have their time in the fight, the endless years, and they might be able to get why he did what he did. Not sympathize with it or agree with it, but appreciate his rationale.

Nile, though. She’s so young, and she barely knew him. She barely knew him, and she was willing to offer forgiveness at twenty-six that men thirty times her age will refuse. He didn’t understand it.

They all went back to Copley’s place, and looked at his little kidnapping moodboard. _The good you’ve done becomes exponential_ , he had said, and Booker stared at the pictures and felt unmoored, cut loose from land. The tiny Napoleonic soldier tilted back a bottle of wine, and Booker looked at it all in silence.

They stayed at Copley’s house that night. He told them that he had more than enough space. Booker thought that he mostly didn’t want to be alone anymore; Booker knew what that was like. Andy got the guest bedroom. Nicky and Joe settled down in the study, which left the living room to Booker and Nile.

It was late when Booker awakened, the fuzzy knowledge that something was wrong tunneling into his head. He glanced around. The couch was empty. Nile’s pile of blankets were strewn on the floor.

Nile was sitting on the window ledge, facing out, legs dangling down. She turned at the sound of his footsteps, and smiled, just a little, like a reflex. He thought she might have been crying; her eyes looked kind of puffy. He didn’t mention it, just walked to the window and squinted out at the soft orange light of suburban London at night, streetlights burning their electric glow.

She shifted, making room for him to sit down next to her. Booker clambered onto the ledge without even glancing down at the thirty-foot drop. The things immortality will teach a person. Nile takes a hit from her vape pen. He’s not sure where she got it from. They sat in silence for a long moment, until Booker’s curiosity got the better of him.

“How did you convince them?” he asked. He didn’t have to clarify; Nile just shrugged.

“By telling them that banishing you wouldn’t solve anything,” she said. “That it was better to keep an eye on you, for your sake and for ours. I threw in a lot of terms like ‘multilateral cooperation’ and ‘resolution of memory.’” She passed him the pen. “And I told them that if they were willing to look past what Copley had done, they should do the same for you.”

“Sounds like you put a lot of thought into this,” Booker said. He brought the pen to his lips and took a hit before handing it back to her. He wasn’t a huge fan of hashish, or vaping, but he didn’t mind it. It was something to do with his hands, at least.

“You want the truth?” she asked. He popped an eyebrow up, an unspoken _yes_ . She was getting pretty good at reading him. “I didn’t. I was bullshitting. I took _one_ conflict resolution course in high school, like seven years ago. It’s just my luck that none of you motherfuckers have taken a workplace Mastering Effective Communication seminar.”

Booker stared at her, mouth opening and closing a few times. Suddenly, he burst out laughing.

“Fuck _,_ ” he said, shaking his head. “But you’re something else.”

“I honestly think they just agreed to get me to shut up,” Nile said, almost a little shy, ducking her head to hide a smile.

“Thank you,” Booker said. He’s not too good with words; spoken words, at least. On paper, his heart is laid bare and the words rush out with the force of a broken dam. He can write. He didn’t know what to say to Nile, right now, that would impress upon her the urgency of his emotions. “I, ah …”

Instead of talking, he clapped her on the shoulder. Nile smiled at him, puffy-eyed and raw, like she knew what he was trying to say.

“I just have one thing to say to you,” she said, turning serious. “I went to bat for you, okay? So you can’t let me down.”

Booker shook his head, just the tiniest bit. “I won’t,” he said – he vowed. Nile took another hit from the pen and passed it back to him.

“Good,” she said, then glanced at his hand, which was still on her shoulder. He let go of her like she was a hot brick.

Nile brought her feet back up through the window, one at a time. She rubbed her eyes, let out a shaky sigh, and said, “Goodnight, Booker.”

“ _Bonsoir_ , Nile,” he said, and watched her leave, still holding the little vape pen in his hand.

: :

Before leaving for wherever the fuck Andy went to regroup, Andy had handed her a credit card and a slip of paper with an address. “Here,” she said. Nile frowned at her, not understanding. “You’ll accumulate safehouses and hidey-holes, over the years, but right now you need a place to stay in London. I’ve had this place since, I don’t know, the 17th century? I last used it in – I think it was ’93. It’ll need cleaning out, but it’s a good place. You can have it.”

“Andy,” Nile said. She wasn’t sure what to say. No one had ever given her a house before.

“Don’t thank me,” Andy said, looking a little embarrassed and trying not to show it. “We look out for each other, that’s all.”

It turned out to not be a house, but a flat, in an old building in Soho. The walls were gray with dust and cobwebs and the windows were streaked with age, but the shower worked, and she set up her bedroll on the least dirty part of the floor for the night. The next morning, the first thing Nile did was go to a local internet café and get herself set up with wi-fi.

When the guy came with the router the next day, he commented on the flat. Nile smiled and explained how she had just inherited this place from her aunt – a statement which, she firmly believed, was not necessarily untrue. After he left, she spent the rest of the day cleaning. She discovered a creaky gas oven and a refrigerator that looked like it was out of the 1970s. Somehow, there were no rats or cockroaches, although some pigeons had set up a nest in one of the windows.

So, Nile bought a mattress and a couch and a dining room table with a set of six chairs; she bought boots without holes in them and visited three separate charity shops for a new wardrobe.

She hesitated over her last purchase, but eventually decided that if Andy got an axe and Nicky and Joe got their swords, and Booker his bayonet, she was granted at least one weird weapon. That in mind, she placed an order on a pair of stun batons.

The day her furniture arrived, Nile was faced with something of a conundrum. She could probably prevail upon some of her neighbors to help her move it all upstairs, but she hadn’t talked to any of them yet. It seemed like an asshole move to make strangers move her stuff.

She was standing there on the sidewalk, hands on hips, glaring at the plastic-wrapped mattress when a familiar voice said from behind her, “Need some help?”

Nile turned her glare on Booker. He was grinning, a little, in that humorless way of his. “You’re a dick,” she informed him. He mimed being struck through the heart.

“Seriously, though,” he said. He paused to drink from his little flask, then continued: “You need a hand with this?” His gesture encompassed the whole street. He swayed on his feet a little.

Because she needed the help, and not at all because she was concerned about Booker being drunk at 2 PM on a Tuesday, Nile stepped up to grab one end of the mattress and indicated for him to do the same with the other end. He tucked his flask away into a pocket.

They moved the furniture in silence, or near silence: Booker swore in French whenever he dropped his end, which happened twice. Nile focused on the work of it, trying to turn this into a good thing in her head. _I’ve never been to England before. It’s like a vacation. I can go to the National Gallery. My family will mourn, and move on_. It always came back to that thought.

When they’re done moving all her furniture, Nile and Booker stand next to each other, observing the room. What had once been a mess of dirt and dust was now clean, at least, but full of boxes. The whole flat was only really three rooms – including the kitchen and bathroom – and a closet.

“Uh,” Booker said, and cleared his throat. Nile glanced at him.

“Want a beer?” she asked. Booker exhaled, slow, and raised a brow.

“Is it cold?”

“Of course it’s cold,” Nile said. “What kind of beer isn’t cold?”

Booker let out a short bark of laughter. “You really haven’t spent much time in England yet, have you?” he said, with that same humorless grin. Nile pulled a couple of beers out of the fridge and popped the tops off with her teeth, which was a fun new thing she could do now.

They sat on the floor of her kitchen and went through a six pack before Nile crawled out to the bedroom-slash-living room section of the flat, and attempted to put together the furniture, slightly tipsy. Booker called out words of encouragement, until she threw a packet of screws at his head. After that, he was quieter, just muttering bits of French to himself while he finished his last beer.

At around 7 PM, Nile put the last piece of the bed frame together. “Voila!” she said, very pleased with herself, and even more pleased with herself when she remembered that she had bought sheets for the bed and everything. Booker raised his head. He had been dozing for the last half hour or so.

“Congratulations,” he said. He yawned. “You have any food?”

They sat at Nile’s newly assembled dining table, which fit perfectly in the kitchen, and polished off the last of her leftovers from the Indian place down the street. Booker wolfed down his food like he thought someone was going to take it away from him.

Nile picked at hers. The excitement of moving had worn off, and now she just felt lonely. Booker poked her in the hand with his fork. When she shot him a look, he shrugged, and jerked a thumb back into the living room, where her short stack of books – just what she had managed to collect in the last two or so weeks – balanced on the new coffee table.

“You like books,” he said. It’s not a question.

“Yeah,” she said. “What is that, a crime?” He shrugged again.

“In some places,” he said. “In some times, yes. What’s your favorite book?”

Nile thought about it, fiddling with her lamb biryani. Booker was eyeing her uneaten food, so she shoved her plate across the table at him.

“ _Song of Solomon_ ,” she said finally. “But not – I don’t know. That was my favorite in high school, at least. I don’t like to stick with one book, or one genre, though. And Morrison is kind of heavy. You know?”

Booker nodded. “My favorite is _Les Trois Mousquetaires_. I could read that book a thousand, a million times. But I wouldn’t want to be restricted to it.”

“Yeah,” Nile said. She wiped her hands on a kitchen towel, since she didn’t have napkins yet. Booker shifted, opened his mouth, and before he could make some pathetic excuse and leave to go get drunk again, she blurted out, “You can crash on the couch.”

Booker looked at her for a long second. Nile met his gaze steadily, although she wanted very badly to look away. She added, “I mean, if you want to. Where are you staying?”

He snorted, brought his hand up to his mouth briefly, and shook his head – not like he was disagreeing with her, but like he was chasing a thought away. “Nowhere as nice as this little place,” he said. Then: “Okay. Thanks.”

Nile shrugged and said, “The team is the team.” She stood to put her fork in the sink, and left to go put sheets on her new bed. Behind her, she heard the clatter of Booker gathering all the plates together.

That night, she laid in her bed and listened to the soft, subtle sound of Booker breathing.

When Nile was a kid, she and her brother shared a room. That was back before her brother had transitioned. When her brother came out, Nile was already moved out, where she roomed with Grace for three years. Grace was nice, if not particularly clever, but she always paid her rent on time. Then Nile was in the Marines, where she slept with her unit, every night, from training to deployment.

There was something comforting about the knowledge of a real, living body within reach. Even if that body was just Booker. She drifted off to sleep, eventually, in the early hours of the morning, and slept better than she had slept for months.

: :

One night turned into two, and then three, and before Nile knew it, Booker had been sleeping on her couch for a week. She didn’t make him leave; he didn’t offer to go. It struck her that Booker was probably the world’s worst dinner party guest. He would slam the food, get drunk and weepy, and then refuse to leave when the night was over. The mental image made her giggle. When Booker shot her a look, she just shook her head.

He had become something of a permanent fixture in her life; or, at least, as permanent as anything could be at this point. She’d wake up to him swearing at the coffee maker or crocheting little squares of cloth, hook moving lightning fast. They didn’t talk much. They slept, and they ate, and they both left the flat to do their own things. Nile went to the boxing gym down the street, or to the grocery store, or to London’s beautiful parks. She didn’t know what Booker did. It worked, somehow.

It was early in the morning – the sun was just peeking over the horizon, bathing London in misty gray light, when Nile’s phone buzzed. It took her a moment of sleepy disorientation before she identified the source of the sound. It buzzed again and she was suddenly as awake as she would be after her third cup of coffee, because that phone was the one Andy gave her, _for work calls only._

Nile swiped at the screen and answered an incoming video call from Andy. In the background, she could see Nicky and part of Joe’s torso.

“Hey,” Nile said, sitting up in bed. She rubbed her eyes. “What is it?”

“Can you see me?” Andy asked, frowning a little. Nile resisted the urge to roll her eyes. For all that Andy, Joe, and Nicky were smart, capable people in many respects, anything at all technological stumped them. It was like working with her grandmother, except Nile’s grandmother was actually very good with technology.

“Yes,” Nile said, pointedly patient. “What’s up?”

“We’ve got a job,” Andy said. “Copley’s provided us with some information, but we’re meeting to discuss it at the Delta safehouse. You know where that is, right?” Andy had also supplied Nile with a stack of maps, safehouses and routes to them (by car, horse, and foot) marked in red sharpie.

“Yeah,” she said.

Blurry and pixelated, Andy said, “And, Nile. Have you seen Booker lately? Intel says he’s still in England. He’s not answering his phone.”

“Yeah, sure,” Nile said. Booker, at least, knew how to use an iPhone, but his charger had been on the fritz lately, and he refused to buy a new one until the old one stopped working entirely. His phone was probably dead. Glancing over her shoulder into what they have been generously calling the ‘living room’ – separated from the ‘bedroom’ by a paper screen – she yelled, “Booker! Wake up!” There was a low thud, the sound of someone falling off of a couch onto a hardwood floor. Booker swore in French.

“What the f –” Joe said, before Nicky shushed him. Nile looked back at Andy.

“We’ll be there in twenty minutes,” she said.

Andy smiled, razor thin and razor sharp. “Make it ten. See you soon.”

“Seriously,” Joe said, off camera and barely loud enough to be heard. “What is he –”

Nile disconnected the call and scrambled to climb into her pants and boots. She snagged the pre-packed bag that she had sitting next to her bed for this very reason, tugged a denim jacket on, and grabbed her phone, looking around for her keys. She wavered as to whether to take the time to brush her teeth, but Booker was already waiting by the door, one eyebrow cocked.

“Andy’s waiting,” he said, and jangled her keys. She scowled, snatched them from his hand and took the three flights of stairs at a record place. Booker followed.

They were silent for the first few minutes of the drive. Then Booker cleared his throat, and said, rather awkwardly, “Uh, they’ll think. That. We’re sleeping together.”

“Well, we aren’t, are we?” Nile took the corner with a little more aggression than usual. She snuck a glance at Booker, who was frowning blankly through the windshield. It was a contemplative frown, not a self-deprecating frown, so she turned her attention back to the drive. If he wasn’t careful, his face would get stuck like that. The man really needed to smile more.

It took them twelve minutes to get to the Delta safehouse. It wasn’t really a house; it was an abandoned courthouse, two cars pulled up outside of it. Nile and Booker got out of the car, looked at each other, and then simultaneously took a deep breath, like they were about to jump into the deep end of a pool.

When they entered the safehouse, everyone turned to look at them. Nile wavered for a moment under the stares, and glanced at Booker, who was studiously avoiding eye contact from anyone.

“Well,” Nile said, and immediately forgot how to speak. “Um.”

“Anyway,” Andy said, that little razor smile curling in the corner of her mouth. “Copley, let’s get the brief. Georgia, you said?”

“Ah, yes,” Copley said, from the laptop that was sitting open on the sole piece of furniture in the warehouse, an old folding table. “The state, that is, not the country. There is a neo-Nazi organization that’s been caught up in some human trafficking.”

“Shit,” Nile said, briefly distracted from the plot of her personal life. “Isn’t being one terrible thing enough for these people?” Joe snorted. Nicky grinned. Booker took another slug from his flask.

“Yes, well,” Copley said. “That’s where you come in. If you’ll look at the satellite images I sent over –”

Andy pulled the maps up on the laptop, almost hanging up on Copley as she did so. Nile listened with one ear, troubled about going back to the United States, even if it was a part she hadn’t ever been to before. She was sure Andy and Copley knew what they were doing, but it still didn’t settle right with her.

Booker bumped her on the shoulder. When she looked at him, he was staring straight at the computer screen, that little contemplative frown still on his face. Nile found herself smiling.

Copley finished his briefing, and they all packed up. Nile took the opportunity to brush her teeth with a bottle of water that Andy had given her. She still wasn’t used to the weight of her batons on her back. They were all almost ready to go when Andy said, rather abruptly, “Nile. Can we talk?”

“Sure,” Nile said, and followed her outside.

As the door closed behind them, she heard Joe and Nicky saying, almost simultaneously, _“Booker –”_

Andy walked them over to the short fence that separated this warehouse from the next one over. Someone, at some point, had planted oak trees along the property line. Andy picked an acorn up off the ground and tossed it back and forth in her hands like a worry stone. Nile watched the empty road. After a moment, Andy sighed.

“Are you sleeping together?” she asked, no judgement in her voice or face. That made it easier for Nile to meet her gaze squarely.

“No,” she said.

“Do you _want_ to be sleeping together?”

Nile glanced at her, surprised, then looked away. “Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about it.” She knew that he was older than her, both physically and actually, and French, of all things, and kind of gross.

She had never thought of herself with an old white guy, let alone an old white guy with an alcohol problem who still mourned his dead wife and children. Nile liked Booker a lot, it was true, but sex with him was just – not even on her radar.

“No, not at all,” she said. Then, because she felt she needed to clarify some things: “He sleeps on my couch and drinks all my beer. It’s not – it’s not _romantic_ , or anything.”

Andy laughed. “Yeah,” she said. “That sounds like Booker.”

“Have you two, you know –” Nile made a hand gesture that probably conveyed nothing. Andy seemed to get it anyway. She shook her head.

“No,” she said. “Me and Book, we keep work and private life separate. It’s not like it is with Joe and Nicky.” Andy stretched her arms above her head, twisting her spine like a damp rag. She made a face.

“What’s wrong?” Nile asked. Andy exhaled slowly, bringing her arms down to her side.

“I’m just stiff,” she said. “Comes with being old, I guess. C’mon, let’s join the others, see what Joe and Nicky have left of Booker.”

Nile felt her lips twitch. She followed Andy. As they approached the warehouse, she expected to hear yelling, or something. Instead, the three men were leaning on the folding table, closed laptop in front of them. Nile couldn’t see Booker’s face from where they were standing. Joe looked thoughtful. Nicky looked unreadable. All three looked up when Andy slid the metal door open.

“There you are!” Nicky said brightly. “We were just ready –”

“To go,” Joe said. Then, to Andy: “Are we good?” She nodded; Andy and Nile sent each other perfectly synchronized looks, eyebrows raised, and then both smiled, almost reflexively. They gathered up their stuff, piled into Andy’s VW Golf, and peeled out of there like hell was on their heels. Nile glanced in the rearview mirror. The boys were crammed together in the tiny backseat. Booker was in the middle seat. Nicky had his head on Booker’s shoulder, eyes slipping closed.

Booker caught her gaze in the mirror. After a moment, he rolled his eyes. Nile looked back through the window at the suburbs of London streaking by, but she found herself smiling, just the tiniest bit.

: :

They settled down in the remains of an old movie theater outside of Atlanta. Nile got first dibs on the remote, so the TV was playing the Braves game. She was only half watching it; Joe and Nicky had already fallen asleep, Joe spooning Nicky, who had one hand resting on the butt of his gun.

Andy had gone outside to do whatever it was that Andy did in the down time on missions. Nile laid back on her bedroll. Booker had set his bedding up next to hers, so that they were both between where Andy was sleeping and the door.

“Copley says I can pick my name,” Nile said, suddenly and quietly, staring at the off-white ceiling of the safehouse. There was a chandelier, but it was the kind with candles, not electricity, so they weren’t using it. “My last name, I mean. And maybe a new first name, too, since _Nile_ is kind of unusual.”

“Hmm,” Booker said. He had his crochet hook at work, hands busy, and his legs stretched out in front of him, ankles crossed. “Have you made a choice yet?”

“No,” she said. “I just – I don’t know what to choose. Out of anything –” She broke off, blinking hard.

“Hmm,” Booker said again. He tilted a glance towards her. “Gascon.” When she looked at him, confused, he clarified: “Your last name. It should be Gascon.”

“Like D’Artagnan?” she asked. He laughed quietly.

“Thank you,” he said. “Yes, exactly like D’Artagnan. Someone’s done her homework.”

“What,” she said. “Have the others not read _The Three Musketeers_?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “They’ve read it. They just don’t like it, not like I do.” He took a – relatively small – swig from his green bottle.

“What are you drinking?” Nile asked. She didn’t recognize any of the French words on the label.

“Absinthe,” Booker said. He offered the bottle. She sniffed; it smelled like black licorice. She took a sip and immediately felt her nose wrinkle. It tasted very much like licorice, too.

“It’s, uh, not for everyone,” Booker said. He was grinning. As much as Nile didn’t appreciate being the butt of his joke, she did contend that she had wanted him to smile more.

“Doesn’t that shit make you go blind?” she asked. Booker laughed again.

“Sometimes,” he said.

“Great,” she said, and then: “Gascon,” rolling the name around her tongue. She didn’t hate it; and it had better implications than the other names she had come up with. Nile had wanted to adopt her grandmother’s maiden name, Daniella Taylor, but Copley said that would be too risky. Daniella Gascon might just work, though.

“I’ll talk to Copley,” Nile said. “Thanks.” Booker shrugged one shoulder, counting stitches with his left hand, the bottle of absinthe tucked between his knees.

“You should get some sleep,” he said. Nile glanced at him, then looked away, not wanting to admit that she was waiting for Andy to come back inside. Instead, she reached a hand out to make sure that her new batons were within easy reach.

Booker seemed to know what she was thinking. “I’ll wake you if anything happens,” he said. He took another sip of absinthe, for all intents and purposes entirely focused on his hook and yarn. If Nile hadn’t seen the gun resting casually by his hip and hadn’t known how quick he was on the draw, she might have been fooled into thinking he was relaxed.

She sighed and rolled over, so she was facing the door. She was just drifting off when Andy came in. She paused by Booker, said something quiet enough that Nile couldn’t catch it, and rested her hand on his shoulder.

“Good night, Nile,” Andy said, just a little louder, and Nile closed her eyes against the world and slept.

: :

“Nile,” Copley said, and it was hard to tell his expression on the little pixelated screen, but he was not smiling.

Andy was seated on one of the movie theater’s overstuffed seats. She had one hand on her shoulder wound, applying pressure, and the other hand to her mouth. Nile looked back and forth, between Andy and Copley, confused. She had just left the room to get the medical kit. Now everyone was staring at her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, plunking the kit down next to Andy. After fifteen minutes of pressure, the bleeding had slowed considerably, so she probably didn’t need stitches. Nile pulled out a roll of gauze.

“Nile,” Copley said again. “It’s your mother.”

The hand holding the gauze convulsed. “My mom?” she said. “What –” She cut herself off. She knew what. There was only one thing that would make them all look at her like that.

Nile looked around the room, Copley on the laptop to Joe to Nicky to Andy to Booker. “How bad?” she said, numb.

“Nile,” Andy said. “You can’t go see her. It’s not safe.”

“How bad?” she asked again.

“You can’t –”

“ _How bad?!”_

Copley cleared his throat. “She’s, ah, in the hospital. Fainted getting out of the shower, went to see a doctor for a concussion test, and the scans showed an aggressive tumor in her brain. Very aggressive. There’s an option for surgery, but the doctors aren’t liking her chances. Without the surgery, she has a month, maybe two.”

“I need to,” Nile said, only halfway aware of what she was saying. “I need to – be with her. I can’t –”

“You can’t go,” Andy repeated. “We can’t risk it.”

“ _Fuck you_ ,” Nile snapped.

“I’ll go with her,” Booker said. He was looking at Andy, but he spoke to her. “Nile, you need someone to watch your back. I can go with you.”

Andy was pale-faced with stress and blood loss. “It’s still too risky,” she said. Booker grabbed her arm and drew her away from the group, talking quickly and quietly. Nile stood there, staring blankly ahead. Her knees suddenly gave out and she collapsed into a cozy, slightly moth-eaten seat. She felt small and lost, sinking into soft cushions when her heart was somewhere around her throat.

Copley looked down. “I’m sorry, Nile,” he said. She blinked at him, several times, and opened her mouth to say something, she wasn’t sure what. Nicky offered her a tissue. It wasn’t until that moment that she realized she was crying. Her first sob caught in her throat, just below the hard lump that was keeping her from speaking.

She didn’t cry, after that. She didn’t cry on the plane – in the Uber – at the hospital. Booker left her in the parking lot behind the hospital’s main building while he scouted out the situation. Nile sat on the curb and let her head fall down onto her knees. She closed her eyes and tried meditating, because Joe said that that helped him when he felt unsettled. She could use a little settling, right now.

 _My family will mourn, and move on_.

Nile swore and punched the concrete next to her boot as hard as she could. Skin split. Knuckle cracked. After a long second, blood welled up in the open cuts on her first two knuckles. Just as quick, they healed.

The door opened. She glanced up, expecting Booker to be back, and froze. Duke was there. He hadn’t seen her; she was partially blocked from view by a dumpster. He fumbled in his pocket for a moment and then pulled out a carton of cigarettes. Without so much as looking around, he lit up.

Nile watched her little brother smoke, and rub his eyes, and eventually leave, heading towards her mom’s Subaru Outback, which she had noted earlier in the parking lot. Duke got into the driver’s seat and just sat there. He still hadn’t looked to see if there was anyone else around.

The door opened again. “Nile?” Booker said. “It’s clear.”

Numb again, after that brief moment of panic when she saw Duke, Nile stood and followed him. He led her through a series of white, antiseptic-y smelling halls until he got to a door. Nile stared at the door, and then at him.

“I can’t do this,” she said, after several seconds of silence. “Booker, I can’t –”

He turned the doorknob. “Yes, you can,” he said, and shoved her in the door.

The room was overflowing with flowers. Flowers are for dead people, she thought, and swallowed hard. In the midst of the riot of color, her mother lay in a hospital bed, wearing a hospital gown. Her eyes were closed, but at the sound of the door, they opened.

Nile froze. Her mother looked weak, and tired, and drawn, but when her eyes met Nile’s, she lit up. Nile made a noise like she had the wind knocked out of her.

“Oh, baby,” Nile’s mother said. “Is this heaven?”

Nile unfroze. She rushed to her bedside and carefully grasped one of her hands. “Mom,” she said, and _there_ were the tears, like they were just waiting for this moment. “Mom, God, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t cry, baby,” her mother said, swiping at the tears on Nile’s face.

“I’m so sorry, Mom.”

Her mother touched her chin. “You have nothing to be sorry about,” she said, firmly. And when Mrs. Freeman said something in that tone of voice, it was goddamn law. Nile sniffed.

“Who’s this?” her mother said, squinting at Booker, who was watching the hall from the doorway.

“He’s a friend,” Nile said.

“Is he?” her mother said, sounding rather skeptical. “Have you died, too?”

Booker places his hand on his heart and sketches out a little bow, like the early-19th century man he was. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I have.”

Her mother cast him another skeptical look and then turned back to Nile. “Is it my time, then?” she asked. “Is that why you’re here?”

Nile shook her head. She couldn’t stop the flood of tears, or keep her voice from breaking when she said, “ _No_ , no, Mom. Not yet. I just wanted –” she faltered for a moment. “I just wanted to see you again.”

“Nile,” Booker said. “We have to go.”

“In a minute,” she snapped.

“We don’t have a minute, we have to go, _now_ ,” he said. Nile pressed a careful kiss to her mother’s forehead.

“I love you, Mom,” she said. “I love you so, so much.”

“I love you too, baby,” her mother said. Booker looked like he was about to forcibly pull her away, so Nile scrambled to her feet and went with him without a further word.

In the car – Booker had gotten a car from somewhere; Nile didn’t ask – Nile found the tears could not stop. She sobbed, wiped her eyes and nose with a tissue from the little packet Nicky had given her before she left, and sobbed some more. She felt like she was drowning in a sea of her own making.

Halfway to the airport, Booker seemed to have reached some sort of internal agreement, because he reached out and clasped one of her hands in his. She clung to it, like a life vest, like she would be lost without it. She squeezed down hard enough that it must hurt, but he didn’t say anything.

At the tiny airport in the middle of nowhere, they board a private plane-slash-deathtrap that was flown by another one of Andy’s Russian pilot friends. Nile sat on a mound of netting that was probably, _usually_ used to secure bricks of heroin or some shit. Booker sat down across from her, ankles crossed. His hands fidgeted. He eventually settled on pleating and un-pleating the fabric hem of his button-down shirt.

“We’re meeting the others in Toronto,” he told her. Nile nodded, vaguely, closing her eyes. She hadn’t really been able to focus on anything besides the way her mother lit up like a Christmas tree when she saw her; the way Duke’s shoulders slumped under the weight of his grief, grief that she _should be_ sharing; _my family will mourn, and move on_. Another tear leaked out of her shut eyes.

 _Mom_ , she thought, and wanted to pray, but the words didn’t come. _Mom mom mom mom mom –_

It was like that, on her side in a drug-runner’s plane, that Nile eventually drifted off to sleep.

: :

Booker didn’t remember when his sons died. Oh, he remembered the general feel of it. Pascal, in the dead of winter, Booker – then just Sebastien – bundled up against a cold that had lost its bite. Alexandre, years later, although he doesn’t know how many years, as the first spring crocuses were sprouting their violet buds. Jean-Pierre, the last and most painful, while autumn lost its grip on the world.

He didn’t remember the dates, but looking at Nile, curled up on a pile of netting, having cried herself to sleep, he remembered what it felt like. Booker remembered Jean-Pierre, screaming that he wasn’t loved, wasting away in his hospital bed. He was relieved that Nile didn’t experience that; of course he was relieved. It still prickled, a little bit, that he was the only one of them who lost family through hate.

Booker shifted his attention to the little wooden flute he was whittling. He wished he had thought to bring his crochet work. There’s nothing like a little crochet when you’re a bit hungover and generally having a terrible time.

His burner phone rang. He answered. Andy said, without so much as a hello, “Are you on your way back?”

Booker blew wood chips off of his hand. “Yes,” he said. “We’re in the plane.”

A pause. “How did it go?” Andy finally asked, voice softer than he had heard in a while. He glanced over at Nile, in the fetal position on the floor of the plane.

“It went,” he said. “Well. Better than I expected, but still bad. Nile was upset. She’s sleeping now.”

Andy let out a sigh, grainy and vague through the shitty burner. “Get her home,” she said. “That’s what’s important now.”

Booker snorted. “See you soon, then,” he said. Andy hung up. Booker grasped the burner and neatly broke it in half. He took a swig from his flask and tossed the pieces of the phone into an empty bucket sitting on the floor of the plane. Before he went back to whittling, Booker let his head fall into his hands. Things with Andy, despite her insistence that an apology was all she needed, were – strained, he supposed. Things with Joe and Nicky were worse. Especially with Nicky.

“They must have loved you a lot,” Nile said. Booker glanced over, surprised – he had thought that she was still asleep. She was sitting up, rubbing her eyes. She looked a little drawn, but she had stopped crying, which was probably a good thing.

Not always, though. When Joe stopped crying, it was a sign that all hell was going to break loose.

“Pardon?” he said. Nile shrugged eloquently.

“They couldn’t have hated you unless they loved you first, right?” she said.

Booker exhaled, then took a swig from his flask. “I don’t think your logic follows,” he told her. He was feeling a little bit dizzy and headachy, so he let his head fall forward, chin to his chest. Nile laughed, just a bit.

“Whatever,” she said. Then: “How long till we land in Toronto?” Booker relays the question to the pilot.

“Twenty minutes,” the pilot said. Nile sighed, a little shakily. When she saw Booker’s concerned look, she straightened up a bit.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Or, well. As fine as I can be.” Booker hummed an acknowledgement and went back to whittling.

They sat in silence for the remaining twenty minutes of flight. The plane came crashing down on its landing, bouncing and rattling its occupants. Nile made a startled noise and grasped the netting that she’d been sitting in, like that would do anything to help. Booker rocked with the motion of the plane, tucking both his knife and his whittling project back in a jacket pocket.

Andy was waiting for them at the airport. Actually, all of them were waiting at the airport, but Nicky and Joe hung back. Andy caught Nile’s chin with one hand, then nodded and stepped forward into a hug. Nile squeezed her like she’d fall apart if she didn’t. Booker looked away, that same petty resentment welling up in his throat.

Nicky and Joe greeted them warmly; Joe even smiled at Booker. He thought it was the first smile he’s seen on Joe’s face since – Christ, since Joe asked, _do you want to watch the game_ and Booker responded _what do you fucking think?_

Booker cleared his throat. Anyway.

They piled into another car. Booker was starting to think that his entire long life would be spent crammed into the back of a car between Joe and Nicky. Joe’s elbow dug into his side and Nicky put his head on Booker’s shoulder, so that his hair tickled Booker’s neck. In his head, Booker ran through a litany of discomforts, mostly to distract himself from the bright burning hope rising in his chest.

And wasn’t it terrible to be hopeful, after what he saw in that hospital with Nile?

Nile caught his gaze in the rearview mirror and attempted a smile. It didn’t go so well, but Booker smiled back regardless. Nile’s face twisted and she ducked her head.

Without looking away from the road, Andy picked up a Mexican wedding cookie from the plate balanced on the dashboard and offered it to Nile. After a moment, she took it.

Booker shifted so that Joe’s elbow was in his ribs instead of his kidney. Nicky was dozing, breath coming slow and sweet. Nile was making a huge mess of powdered sugar and crumbs. Andy somehow managed to eat her cookie while wearing a black shirt and not getting it all over herself. Booker didn’t know how she did that.

The road trip takes around seven hours, with short breaks for when Joe forced Andy to stop and stretch and take a piss. The five of them shuffled around the car at every rest stop, but somehow Booker always managed to be in the middle back. He didn’t take it personally; maybe he should.

He was sandwiched between Nile and Joe, who Booker would think was dead if it weren’t for the obnoxious snoring. Nicky was in the passenger seat, ostensibly helping Andy navigate and actually reading the map upside down. Andy was swerving around cars that were going too slow for her – in other words, every other car on the road. Nile, on Booker’s left, was attempting to get powdered sugar off of her shirt with a lint roller.

Booker considered the sheer lack of competence exhibited by everyone in this car and said, mostly to himself, “How did any of us survive to adulthood?”

“Nile,” Andy said, then laid on the horn at a big rig. Christ. They were all going to die, probably. “Punch him for me, please.”

They made it to a safehouse outside of Montreal – an actual safe _house_ this time, and one of Booker’s favorites. It was a cozy cabin with a row of apple trees out front. Once, Joe got attacked by a moose at this place. Nicky still started snickering whenever someone brought it up.

They piled back out of the car and Andy popped the trunk. Nicky and Joe started unpacking their stuff. Booker went to Nile, who was sitting sideways in the back seat so that her feet dangled out the door.

“Hey, Gascon,” he said. She looked up at him and tried to smile again. This time it went better, more natural, less like her teeth hurt. That was a good sign, he thought.

“Hey, le Livre,” she said back, and took his hand to help her to her feet. She didn’t immediately let go, squeezing until he felt his bones creak. Booker just looked at her, tired and aching with grief.

“Let’s go inside,” he said, finally. “Things will be better once you get some of Nicky’s hot chocolate in you.”

“Will they?” Nile said, bleak. Booker nodded, looking out at the tiny apple orchard instead of at the expression on her face.

“Yes,” he said, tugging on her hand until the palm is pressed flat over his heart. Vowing it. “They will. Hot chocolate heals all that ails you.”

Nile looked at him. The corner of her mouth twitched up. “Okay,” she said, and pulled her hand free of his grip. “Show me this magical hot chocolate.” She gathered up her batons, which she hadn’t put down since they left Chicago.

Booker bowed her into the house, mostly to make her laugh, and called ahead of them, “Nicky, we need cocoa, _grazie mille_ , _signore_.” And for a second there, with Nile giggling to herself and everyone that he loved gathered in that little cabin, for just for a second -

Things were better. Booker took a deep breath, let it out, and followed his family inside.

**Author's Note:**

> again, thanks to @hauntedfalcon. hope you all enjoyed this fic!! if you want to scream about tog or anything, really, hmu on tumblr @tenderjock.


End file.
